Team Dignitas Dota Invitational preview: Darer

Only two days remaining until the Team Dignitas Dota 2 Invitational takes place, where 16 top teams will be fighting for the €1,000 prize sponsored by Alienware. This tournament brings together the best teams in Europe and so we decided to have a chat with the teams to see how they prepared and what their expectations are.

Today its Darer's turn to be in the spotlight as the team is said to be heading into an epic match in round two if both them and Na'Vi win round one. Let's see how they prepared!

Remember that Alienware are making this tournament and on top of that they are also releasing their own web series called The Proxy. Be sure to check it out!

Links:
Alienware Arena
Alienware's The Proxy on facebook
Like Team Dignitas on facebook
Follow Team Dignitas on twitter

 

To start off, introduce yourselves as a team please.

Hello, we are team Darer. We are a new team, but our players are well known and with a lot of experience. Darer as an organization has been around for almost two years now. Darer Entertainment is legally registered in Gibraltar but most of the staff is from Bulgaria. Regarding our players, I think most of you know them very well, but for those who don’t, here they are:

Ivan “Artstyle” Antonov - Ukraine
Yaroslav “NS” Kuznetsov - Russia
Sergey “G” Bragin - Russia
Andrey “Dread” Golubev - Russia
Alex “Santa” Koltan - Russia



How do you think you will do in the tournament?

Since we are a new team, it’s too early to say how we will do in the tournament. But considering the skills and reputation of our players, I would say that we are in the top 16 teams in the world. The way I see it now, our hardest game in the first rounds of the tournament would be in round 2 against NaVi.

How did your team prepare for this tournament?

Same as for other tournaments. A lot of practice.

Do you think there is an absolute favorite to win this event?

I think that most of the teams in this tournament have big ambitions and they are all training really hard. We have seen a lot of surprises in games where one of the teams is favored , so I wouldn’t say there is a team that is an absolute favorite to win the tournament. I would say NaVi and Quantic have good chances considering their performance at The Defense.

Out of all the other teams within the tournament, which team would you put down as your biggest threat? Who do you think will emerge victorious?

Biggest threat would be one of the strongest teams. And since we are facing NaVi in the second round, I would say they are the biggest threat. But I am pretty confident that we have what it takes to win. The only problem is that most of the games are best of 1, which means that sometimes the winner will not be the better team. We will see soon enough.

How long has it taken you as a team to get where you are today? What games have you played previously? Do you all know each other from past games such as League of Legends and the legendary original Dota?

Our team is about one month old, which is a very short period to improve our team play, but we are making progress. 3 of our players have played DotA together in DTS in 2010, but that was a long time ago and I believe they still need to play a lot together to reach the same level of team play that they had before. But they have the potential, and all that’s left to do is just to train hard.

For those people who don’t have Dota 2 beta keys yet, could you tell them a bit about what has changed from the regular Dota as well as tell us which heroes you prefer to play with and why?

Well, since I am not a professional player myself, I don’t know relevant is my opinion. But I can say that I’ve played DotA for at least 5 years and I am playing DOTA 2 since the beta was released and from my experience so far I can say that DOTA 2 is the better game by far. All that Valve did is analyze the old DotA, find it’s problems and fractures and improve on those things.

DOTA 2 has everything from DotA (except some heroes that are not finished yet) and in addition it has everything that DotA needed but didn’t had. As far as heroes go, in DOTA 2 I play the same heroes that I played in DotA and they are Storm Spirit, Pudge, Tinker, and Ancient Apparition (a hero that started playing in DOTA 2 only because it’s made so much better ).

To conclude is there anything you would like to say to the readers of this interview? Or even a few words towards your potential opponents in the tournament?

I would like to invite everyone to watch our games. I am 100% sure that they will be really interesting and fun to watch. And to our opponents, I would like to say good luck in all matches, except when you are playing against Darer.